Yes, for the past few months, field recording has been the name of the game. As previously mentioned, I've been attempting to tackle many themes for The Sound Collectors' Club. In July, I recorded the Dallas, TX 'city skyline,' as well as a few freight trains passing through Irving and Denton, TX. The new MKH416 and pair of CM3's have worked beautifully, as have the Sound Devices 702's I'm currently using. Additionally, I took two separate trips on business to the Texas/Mexico border over the summer, capturing some interesting sounds there.

First up...

Trains: Scarier Up-Close

August 19th, 2013

Looking at the photos, you can see that the train was moving so fast that the iPhone's CMOS camera sensor was too slow to keep up. This gives it an almost cartoon-like quality, as if it is leaning forward.

There are two categories of trains I went out to record. The main one was Trains: Design, while the other is for background train textures. When thinking of a location to record trains, Denton was the first place that came to mind. There are trains all over Dallas, but I can recall a number of times recording in Denton when trains showed up unexpectedly, making their presence unmistakably known.

In particular, there is a bridge with two sets of tracks on it; as far apart as the tracks may be at the other end of town, they are but a few yards from each other here, and must pass over this narrow point. Sure enough, within about six or seven minutes of parking my car, I scrambled to ready the gear as a train blasted its horn. Just in time, I hit record and plugged everything in. The first thing rolling was the R26, directly underneath the train, with both an SM57 and AT8004 at its side, in addition to the inbuilt XY and Omni stereo pairs. Six channels underneath the train, all absolutely terrifying to listen to.

Something to keep in mind with this track is that the left and right channels are recording separate rails of the tracks. The movement happens overhead, not right to left. Also, the microphones do have different pickup patterns (cardioid and omni). I chose to bring two different mics so that I could hear how each of them sounded separately.

Next up, I plugged in the a pair of Line Audio CM3's configured in ORTF. They sat inside a zeppelin on a stand. This track gave me a great sounding pass-by. The credit for this goes to Rene Coronado for blogging about it first (recording a train, no less).

Finally, the MKH416 sat in my hands as the train blew by. There was actually quite a strong wind being pushed along when it arrived, as well. The sound is wonderful, but it's in mono, and just doesn't have that "larger than life" stereo image of the ORTF technique.

Since it was over 100 degrees out (I know it doesn't look that hot in the photos, but believe me... it was), I went ahead and moved on to another position by the time the next one came. I moved under the bridge and eventually got a few more over the next few hours. I couldn't find any information on schedules for these freight trains, so my best best was to just show up and wait.

I had to leave some of the microphones unattended while I set the others, and the poor 416 just kept getting the short end of the stick. The cable I used for it after I climbed down into the culvert cut out halfway through one of the bys, and the recorder was out of reach on one (It had started raining, so I left the recorder under the bridge with the other mics, and pistol-gripped the 416 at the edge). One time, I left the mic perched atop the edge of the culvert, around 40 yards from the tracks. When I climbed down to monitor the CM3s, the 416 got blasted so hard with the horn that it clipped beyond saving. I know this sounds like bad practice for a sound designer, but I really had no idea how it was going to sound whenever I moved. Hey, lesson learned. Even the R26's internal mics clipped when it sat underneath the train. Believe it or not, gain staging wasn't the problem- the digital tracks themselves did not clip- not even close. The mics themselves couldn't handle the sheer SPL of the train at times. Fortunately, all is not lost, and the sound is still quite usable.

Personally, I think the real heroes here were the CM3's. We'll see, though, next time I go out. This isn't the first time I've recorded a train, but it is the most thorough I've been capturing one. I'm thinking next time I'll use two AT8004's; I prefer it over the SM57 for the tracks-track (heh).

Really enjoyed this post. Inspired me to hunt my own trains in San Marcos recently. I ended up getting reasonably good recordings of three different trains one morning, though I didn't have the courage to lay my recorder on the track. That is awesome. I'd love to hear more of that take.